an injury to one is an injury to all

March 11, 2011

Tomorrow I’m planning on walking 2.3 miles to Pioneer Square in downtown Portland, hopefully arriving by 2:30pm along with everyone else who’s planning to march and gather in support of the students and workers of Wisconsin.

But it’s not just about Wisconsin. It’s about Ohio and Michigan. It’s about every city and state whose unions are under attack. It’s about the poor and the elderly who are being targeted to shoulder the burden of tax cuts for businesses. It’s about attacks on everything from public education and PBS, to reproductive healthcare and even democracy itself. I really wish people would start paying more attention to what’s happening in places like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and start fighting back.

We’re spending over $663.8 billion on weapons, overseas military bases and the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, but we can’t even manage to fund public schools and care for the elderly here at home. That’s $663, 800, 000, 000! That’s more than Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan and Russia combined, and accounts for 40% of total global arms spending.

I don’t know how many other people out there feel the way I do and are willing to try and do something about it, but I’m tired of reading the news and seeing this insanity become the status quo. If we don’t start taking notice and getting more active, we’re going to find ourselves in an Orwellian/Atwood-esque dystopia.

Apathy and complacency are the real enemies of freedom in the US, and I hope that at least some of you will join me in trying to put power back into the hands of the people. We need to understand that we’re all in this together; and as the old IWW motto goes, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”